The Solar Rail System

(1976)

 

Imagine the highways and freeways gone. No cars, no trucks, no exhaust pollution, no noise pollution, no dead animals lying on the sides of the road. Imagine no huge Cal-Trans budget and tax burden because the roads are gone. Imagine no more CHP tickets and no more fossil fuel cars. Imagine all the money saved if California had a state-wide mass transit system that fueled itself with electricity generated by the Sun.

Imagine the thousands of acres of highway road beds turned into forests and organic farms and quiet villages where people and animals can safely cross underneath a quiet electro-magnetic monorail system where the monorail itself contains a thousands of miles long solar collecting system that catches, stores, and releases electricity from the sun supplying all the power needed to run both passenger and freight monorail trains throughout California.

This is the future. This is the promise of the Solar Rail System for the 21st Century.

 

Years have gone by and still there are no solar railways. Why is that? I've offered the Solar Rail concept many times in letters but the only thing one hears about are high-speed trains running the same old way. Depressing the way social change, technological change never seems to go in positive directions that really benefit the people.

 

2022 Update:

Solar power needs Batteries. So put Battery Storage in the monorail itself. Make standard battery rail units available for commercial building and home construction.